EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON 
471 
by I. G. Warnicke, of the firm of Messrs. Lawson, Murray, and War- 
nicke, his printers being Messrs. R. and W. Carr, a Philadelphia firm 
of note in those days. 
There is hut one criticism 1 would make of the Wild Pigeon as 
portrayed by Wilson; it is that the sawn-off stump upon which it stands 
is altogether too small. As the bird had a length between 16 and 17 
inches, we can readily calculate what the diameter of that stump must 
have been. Surely the tree could not have been of a size sufficiently 
large to demand sawing across to fell it! This discrepancy has doubt¬ 
less been observed by others—hence the placing of Wilson’s Wild 
Pigeon on the ground in some of our modern text-books in zoology. 
On page 10 of his preface, Wilson gives us a paragraph, the senti¬ 
ment of which is quite as true to-day as in his time; he says: "‘Let 
hut the generous hand of patriotism he stretched forth to assist and 
cherish the rising arts and literature of our country, and both will most 
assuredly, and that at no remote period, shoot forth, increase, and 
flourish with a vigor, a splendor, and usefulness inferior to no other 
on Earth.” 
In skimming through that most useful piece of work, the Biograph¬ 
ical Appendix of Dr. Elliott Coues, we meet with various other works, 
of a minor sort or otherwise, in which cuts of the Wild Pigeon occur, 
or may occur, as those of E. A. Samuels, W. L. Bailey, W. P. Turnbull, 
and others. In the important ornithological works of Baird, Brewer, 
and Ridgway, only the heads of the birds described are figured; while 
in Mr. Ridgway’s well-known “Manual” we find hut an excellent char¬ 
acter drawing, giving in outline simply the head, wing, tail, and foot 
of the Passenger Pigeon. 
There is a quaint figure of the bird under consideration in the earlv 
w r ork of P. Kalm, published in 1772, and entitled “Travels Into North 
America,” with a very lengthy sub-title. The plate of the Wild Pigeon 
is opposite page 74; while in 1785, or thirteen years after Kalm pub¬ 
lished, there appeared the well-known classic of T. Pennant, entitled 
“Arctic Zoology.’ Here a very crude engraving of the Passenger 
Pigeon is given on the same plate (which is No. XIV.) wfith the Caro¬ 
line Dove. (Fig. 10). This I examined in a copy of the work formerlv 
in the personal library of the late Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, which is now- 
in the library of the LTnited States National Museum. Who engraved 
this plate is a fact still unknown to me, w-hile the work was printed 
by Henry Hughs, of London. Volume II. is devoted to the Birds, 
which are grouped in Class II., and it is on page 322 that we find 
treated Order IV., the Columbine , under which a brief account of the 
Wild Pigeon is given. 
Ornithologists are familiar with the remarkable history that at¬ 
taches to the great folio work on Pigeons, of which C. J. Temminck is 
